


earth to kuiper 2329, calling

by redluxite (wordstruck)



Series: VLD One-Shots [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Astronaut Shiro, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, University student Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 00:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14249613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite
Summary: Shiro looks at the log. The communication is definitely from Earth, and the system has traced it to somewhere in the United States. Another moment and it narrows the location to California.That gets a raise of eyebrows. Shiro looks back to the communications interface. “This is Kuiper 2329, active manned space station.” And because he has manners, even on his own in space, he adds, “may I know who’s speaking?”“Holy shit.” The disbelief and awe in the guy’s voice is clear, and it makes Shiro bite down on a smile. “I am -- wow, I didn’t actually expect -- I mean, uh. Hi. This is, uh. This is Keith, from -- from Marmora Tech, and I’m not… a space station.”In which Shiro is an astronaut manning the Kuiper 2329 Station, who receives an out-of-the-blue transmission from a student named Keith.





	earth to kuiper 2329, calling

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a commish/request piece for [@ssumafo](https://twitter.com/ssumafo) and [@plupip](https://twitter.com/plupip) on Twitter. Based on my [Tweet thread](https://twitter.com/okw_tr/status/980731922576850945?s=19) ♥️
> 
> Unbeta'd so far, but I'll edit anything I catch XD May require some suspension of belief, since this is set in a universe where Earth has regular deep space missions and really good tech.

* * *

 

Shiro has been on the Kuiper space station as a one-man crew for five months, eleven days, fifteen hours, and twenty-six minutes.

He still goes by Earth hours, much as ‘time’ moves at a slower pace, this far away from the Sun. He’s got a digital clock that helps him count the hours and days. It’s synced to the Garrison timezone.

Shiro uses it to manage his schedule -- when to check the meters and gauges to record the energy readings, when to send data packets back to ground control. When to expect the next deep space mission that’ll touch base with him, before it heads off past the edge of the solar system.

(He’s had two of those, so far -- one of them Matt’s, on his way for a fly-by of Proxima Centauri. He’d checked in with the Kuiper station about a month ago; it’ll be another three before he comes back.)

It’s almost at 1530 hours, Earth time, which means Shiro can relax for a while since the data packet isn’t due until 1800 hours. He sits on the floor by the main console, idly playing a modded version of _Plants vs Zombies_ that Matt had hooked him up with before Shiro had left Earth.

He’s in the middle of a round when his communications line suddenly crackles to life.

Shiro looks up, stunned, because that’s _not_ supposed to happen.

The Garrison isn’t due to get in touch with him until the end of the week, unless there’s an emergency of some sorts. This communication log isn’t from the Garrison.

Shiro blinks at his console warily, before reaching out and opening the line.

“Hello?” comes a staticky, tentative voice.

It’s definitely not urgent correspondence, then, because those don’t start with _hello,_ and they certainly don’t sound like a confused boy.

“Hello,” he says, slow and careful.

There’s a pause.

“Who… am I talking to, exactly,” the voice says.

Shiro looks at the log. The communication is definitely from Earth, and the system has traced it to somewhere in the United States. Another moment and it narrows the location to California.

 _That_ gets a raise of eyebrows. Shiro looks back to the communications interface. “This is Kuiper 2329, active manned space station.” And because he has manners, even on his own in space, he adds, “may I know who’s speaking?”

“Holy shit.” The disbelief and awe in the guy’s voice is clear, and it makes Shiro bite down on a smile. “I am -- wow, I didn’t actually expect -- I mean, uh. Hi. This is, uh. This is Keith, from -- from Marmora Tech, and I’m not… a space station.”

By the end of the guy’s spiel, Shiro has his lips pressed together to keep his amusement in check. There’s still a large chance this is a danger of sorts, but Shiro’s an optimist.

“Hello, Keith,” he says, resuming his seat on the floor. “How’d you get on here?”

“Oh, uhm.” Keith’s tone turns a little -- guilty. “My adviser, he’s, ah, one of the outsource trackers for the Kuiper mission, and I swear, I just wanted to see if I could trace his frequency this far out. Please don’t get me in trouble.”

 _Ah._ That much, Shiro recognizes -- the Garrison had contracted several astronomy bases across the United States to help track the Kuiper station (and other manned space vehicles) for maximum accuracy and surveillance. Still, it’s pretty impressive for a university student to have latched onto and followed the Kuiper tracking frequency, never mind actually _communicate_ with him.

“No worries, Keith.” Shiro grins. “You’re the most interesting thing to happen to me this week, so I don’t mind keeping this a secret.”

Keith lets out a long exhale of relief that crackles over the line. “Okay,” he says, then there’s a pause. “Wait, really?” Confusion and surprise. “But you’re… in space.”

Shiro snorts out a laugh. “I am, but believe me, nothing much happens out here in space.”

“Huh.” Shiro’s willing to bet that Keith’s cocking his head right now, brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t have thought.”

There’s something so wonderfully candid and honest about Keith and his manner of speaking that makes an ache spike in Shiro’s chest. Partly because he hasn’t had real human conversation in so long -- something that isn’t a report to his Garrison superiors, or a quick check-in with Matt -- and partly because Keith sounds so very sincere. Shiro’s smile softens into something a little more wistful, as he looks at the tiny blip on the screen that shows where Keith is, back home.

“If you want,” he says, “I could tell you.”

There’s another pause, longer this time, that makes Shiro wonder if he’d overstepped somehow. Then--

“Really?” The word is soft, wondering, and somehow makes Shiro want to laugh again. There’s a rustling noise on Keith’s end of the line. “I mean -- yeah, I’d like that, if you -- if you wanted to tell me. That’d be really cool, honestly, because I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like up in space. But like, not _right now,_ obviously, because--” and Keith’s kind of stumbling over his words now, in a way that’s terribly endearing “--I should really go or my adviser might catch me, and you probably have space things to do--”

“Keith.”

“--or well, maybe you don’t, because you just told me nothing much happens up there, but you might have something to do _now,_ and--”

“ _Keith._ ”

“--and sorry, I’m gonna stop talking.”

Shiro’s shoulders are shaking from the effort of keeping his laughter quiet. He presses a hand to his mouth and tries to regain his composure. “It’s fine,” he says, when he can talk again. “You can call me back, you know.”

“Oh.” Terribly, _terribly_ endearing. “I can?”

“Yeah.” Shiro gets up to stand over the console again. A corner of his mouth quirks up. “If you can manage.”

There’s a pause where Shiro would swear Keith is squinting at his own interface, askance. “Oh, I’ll show you.”

It almost sets Shiro off again. His hand hovers over the _terminate communication_ icon as he shakes his head. “I’ll look forward to it.” And then, because he’s also a nerd at heart, he adds, “Kuiper 2329 signing off.”

That prompts a small, easy laugh.

“Keith out.”

 

(Shiro decides that Keith has a nice laugh, and that he wouldn’t mind hearing that sound again.)

 

True to his word, Keith _does_ hail the Kuiper station again, just a little over a week later. It’s 1647 hours by Shiro’s clock, the same for Keith; he’s probably just gotten out of class or on a break. The station’s system has flagged Keith’s frequency signature, so Shiro knows it’s him when the console signals an incoming communication.

He opens the line with a small smile, that widens as Keith’s voice comes over the line.

“Earth to Kuiper 2329, calling.”

 _Dork,_ Shiro almost says, but he’s one to talk. He settles himself on the floor by the console. “This is Kuiper 2329, I copy.”

There’s a small exhale of relief, like Keith had been worried Shiro wouldn’t answer. But his voice is teasing as he says, “you know, you never actually gave me your name last time.”

Given that the main details of the Kuiper mission are available to the public, and given that Keith’s adviser is actively helping monitor things, Shiro knows that Keith knows his name. But he plays along, anyway. “Shirogane Takashi, at your service.” It’s a near thing that he doesn’t bow. “But most people call me Shiro.”

“ _Shiro._ ” Keith tries out his name like he’s tasting it, and that’s -- Shiro likes how it sounds. “So, Mister Astronaut, how’s space doing?”

Shiro snorts, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Space is the same as it’s always been,” he says, amused. “It’s very big.”

Keith cracks up at that, a big and breathless laugh that Shiro kind of wants to bottle up and keep. It’s hiccupy, crackling across the line, and Shiro suddenly wishes he could _see_ what Keith looks like in this moment. If he has his head thrown back, loose-limbed and carefree, or if he curls up into himself, hand pressed to his mouth and shoulders shaking.

He sits and waits in dry amusement as Keith gets it out of his system.

“God, you’re a dork,” Keith says when he’s managed to compose himself. Shiro hopes he’s not imagining the fondness in Keith’s voice. “No, but really. You promised you’d tell me. I’m piggybacking my adviser’s frequency to talk to you.”

Shiro huffs out a small laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure that was a huge pain.”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

Shiro rolls his eyes. “And yet here you are.”

“Well, yeah.” A rustling noise, like Keith’s adjusting something near the mic. “I wanted to talk to you.”

 _Oh._ That makes something warm spike in Shiro’s chest. He looks away, even if Keith can’t see the stupid grin that’s spreading over his face.

“Fine,” he concedes. “Got anything you want to know?”

 

It becomes something of a routine, after that. Keith hails Shiro whenever he can get away with it, sneaking time in between classes and work. If anyone has noticed the semi-regular, hours-long communications between Earth and Kuiper 2329, they’re not saying anything. Shiro’s pretty grateful.

He can’t tell Keith anything classified, obviously, and nothing too detailed either. But Shiro talks about the mundane things of life in space -- the food (“rehydrated scrambled eggs are _awful,_ god, I even miss the dry omelettes they’d serve at the cafeteria”); the routine (“wait, so you _still_ get up at 7:30am every day to exercise? Even in space?”); the view (“it’s darker out here than you’d think, and everything looks -- really far away”). He tells Keith about the chunk of asteroid he’d picked up on a brief excursion once; about the repairs he has to do on the ship; about how he’d accidentally turned off the gravity on the station, three weeks into his mission.

He tells Keith a lot of things, really.

“You’d like Matt,” he says one afternoon, as he sits in the chair of the main deck and tries to organize the data packet to send to the Garrison later that day. _Tries,_ because if he’s honest, his conversation with Keith is more interesting than compiling a report on his tablet that can be summarized as _everything’s exactly the same as yesterday, pretty much._

“He’s a bit of a nerd,” Shiro goes on, smiling fondly, “and he talks way too much, but he’s really smart and passionate about what he does.”

“ _You’re_ calling someone a nerd,” Keith says wryly.

Shiro looks up to the console across the deck, defensive. “He gets excited about _rocks._ ”

Keith hums. “You got excited about flash-frozen sausages last time.”

“Only because I’ve been eating tasteless, reconstructed bread for the last--” and then Keith starts laughing, and Shiro realizes he’s being teased. He frowns at the console, grateful that Keith can’t see his cheeks turning pink. “Don’t make me hang up on you.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Keith says, a little breathless. (He’s probably not sorry in the slightest, but Shiro’s also not really mad.) He clears his throat. “How’d you guys meet, then?”

“Garrison.” Shiro smiles at the memory of a younger, scrawny Matt in his cadet uniform, grinning as he’d popped out from his father’s immense piles of resource papers. Matt had been his communications officer for the mission flight simulations, and between the two of them and their engineer -- a brilliant girl named Narasaki Ayaka -- they’d been the prodigies and terrors of their year. They’ve all come a long way since -- Matt is on his Proxima Centauri fly-by, and Ayaka is the head engineer for the upcoming Ganymede mission, while Shiro is here as the one-man crew for the Kuiper station. Shiro’s pretty proud of that.

“His father was one of the head researchers, you might have heard of him. Sam Holt?”

“Yeah!” Keith’s voice comes a little too loud, sparking some feedback. “Oops, sorry. But yeah, I do know Dr. Holt. I referenced his research for a paper once, he’s brilliant.”

“So is Matt.” Shiro’s pretty excited to check in with him again once he’s completed the Proxima Centauri orbit and turned back to Earth. Even if it means Matt will talk his head off.

“So are you,” Keith points out, and Shiro blinks, caught off-guard and a little too pleased.

“Yeah?” he asks, looking back down at his tablet. His cheeks are warm.

“Yeah,” and there’s a smile in Keith’s voice.

 

In turn, Keith tells Shiro about his classes and his work as an RA, about his day-to-day life. He whines about 7:00am Physics lectures and the really bad coffee in the research labs, describes his tiny studio apartment and his campus and his tiny, ragtag group of friends.

And every time, his candidness and sincerity take Shiro’s breath away.

Quietly, almost shyly, Keith tells Shiro about his plans for the future -- about his ideas for his thesis, and how, once he’s graduated, he’s going to apply for the Garrison space program.

“I’m gonna be out there one day too,” he says, late at night -- 2346 hours by Shiro’s clock, but Keith’s staying at the lab to work and Shiro’s sitting on the floor by the console, fiddling with his tablet. He should really be sleeping, but he doesn’t want to stop listening to Keith either.

“Yeah?” he asks, smiling.

“Yeah.” Keith’s determined tone peters out as he yawns, and Shiro has to bite down a laugh. “ I’m gonna go further than you, further than anyone’s ever gone.”

(Shiro can see it, though -- it’d suit Keith, being out in space. Keith with his big dreams and this insatiable need to chase new horizons. He’d be good at it.)

“Well,” Shiro says, leaning back against the console and closing his eyes. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

There’s a pause, then a disparaging snort. “Fuck off.”

Shiro’s grin sticks up until they say good night.

 

(He can see it, though. He believes Keith, wholeheartedly.)

 

The weeks go by. Matt touches base with the Kuiper station on his way back to Earth, and he does indeed talk Shiro’s head off about the data he’d collected on Proxima Centauri and the newest frontier of space, out past the edge of their solar system. Shiro passes over his asteroid samples and tells him about Keith.

“So this kid hacked his adviser’s tracking frequency, and now you’re just… talking,” Matt says, skeptical and bemused.

“Pretty much,” Shiro says, shrugging.

Matt looks at Shiro for a long moment. Shiro shifts his gaze a little to the left.

“Leave it to you to develop a crush on someone from all the way out here in space,” his friend mutters, rolling his eyes and turning away to get another packet of juice.

Shiro stares at him, feels his cheeks heat up. “I do not--”

Matt pins him with a Look. Shiro shuts his mouth.

Okay, maybe he does have a little crush.

 

(It’s not his fault, though, he reasons, as he puts together another data packet to send back to ground control. If he does like Keith, just a little, well. It feels a little inevitable. Keith’s just magnetic that way.)

 

Shiro has been on the Kuiper station as a one-man crew for eleven months, two days, twenty-one hours and six minutes. He’s been on the communications line with Keith for about half an hour, talking about Keith’s recent exam on the mechanics of deformed bodies.

“Also,” Keith says, and his tone has turned -- hesitant, somehow, and a little bit nervous. There’s a pause, almost like he’s collecting himself. “I heard you’re coming back soon.”

Shiro purses his lips. The Kuiper mission had been created to last all of the year, one of the first long-term space operations. He’s got another three weeks here on the base, just in time for the most recent deep space exploration team to touch base with him again. They’re his ride back home.

“Yeah,” he says, smile a little speculative and sad. As lonely and mundane as it’s been, being a one-man crew on a space station at the edge of the solar system, he’s gotten used to staying out here among the stars. Kind of even likes it.

“It’s a pretty big deal over here,” Keith goes on, with a small laugh. “My adviser’s been really busy helping prepare for it.”

“Is that why you haven’t called me in a while?” Shiro teases, grinning (like he hadn’t been disappointed it had taken Keith two weeks to call, like he isn’t still on the deck at 2216 hours just to talk to Keith).

“Sorry about that.” Keith’s voice is warm over the line, and, well. Shiro’s gotten used to that, too. “I missed you, actually.”

Now that -- that just isn’t fair.

Shiro presses a hand to his mouth, trying to cover up a blush even if no one’s around to see it. He coughs once, twice, and attempts to regain his composure.

“Yeah?” he asks, and winces as his voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah, I, uh. Kind of felt weird, not having you to talk to.”

Keith laughs again. “Still boring out there in space?”

The old joke makes Shiro snort. “Pretty much.”

There’s a brief silence, as Shiro wrestles with his insecurity and Keith -- does something on his end that’s making tiny rustling noises. Possibly flipping through some papers. It’s enough time for Shiro to decide that he’s being a right idiot and there’s not much for him to lose, anyway.

“If you want,” he asks, “you could meet me after I get back?”

There’s another pause, longer this time, and god, Shiro really hopes he hasn’t overstepped this time. Then--

“Really?” The word comes out a bit too fast and excited, and it unspools something in Shiro, a tension in his bones. The rustling on Keith’s end abruptly stops. “I mean -- yeah, I’d like that, if you -- if you really wanted me to. Not like, at the actual landing site, obviously, because--” and Keith is stumbling over his words again, so terribly endearing that Shiro wants to laugh “-- I wouldn’t be allowed, since I’m just a student and not really related to the mission--”

“Keith.”

“--or to the Garrison at all, or to you, but like. Could I wait outside? Is there an outside the Garrison? Or is right after you land like, way too soon, did you mean like, _after_ after, because--”

“ _Keith._ ”

“--sorry, yeah. Uh. You were saying.”

Shiro is outright laughing now, muffled behind his hand, shoulders shaking from the effort to be quiet. God, he really is so gone on this boy. Matt’s not gonna let him live this down.

“Not at the landing site, no,” he says, when he can talk again. He’s still smiling hard enough for his cheeks to hurt, though. “I’ll have to debrief with the Garrison, and spend a couple of days in quarantine so I can adjust to being back on Earth and out of a closed system. Then there’s a ton of paperwork to deal with, and press talks, and more meetings. But yes, _after_ after. I can come meet you. If you want.”

“Ah,” Keith says, sheepishly. “Right. That makes sense.”

So terribly endearing.

Shiro shakes his head. “Would that be okay, then?”

There’s a smile in Keith’s voice; Shiro can hear it. “Yeah. That’d be -- that’d be great.”

Shiro exhales in relief, and something warm blooms in his chest.

“It’s a date, then.”

 

Shiro has been back on Earth for one month and thirteen days when he makes the four-hour drive from the Garrison base in Arizona to San Diego, California. It’s 1637J when he arrives, a little before Keith’s last class of the day lets out.

For a man who’s spent a whole year on his own in deep space, facing quite a number of dangerous scenarios, Shiro’s pretty nervous about meeting Keith for the first time.

He parks the Garrison-issue Jeep in the lot by the engineering colleges, and leans on his door to wait, watching the students pass him by.

At 1702 hours, someone emerges from one of the buildings and cranes his neck, looking out over the parking lot. It’s the red retro jacket that catches Shiro’s eye, tied around the guy’s waist. When he catches sight of Shiro by the Jeep, his whole body seems to jolt, and that’s when Shiro knows.

Keith barrels straight for him, and when he gets close enough for Shiro to really _see--_

“Hey.” Keith comes to a staggering halt a few paces away, and his smile is enough to knock Shiro’s breath loose. Shiro looks him over -- a riot of black hair tied in a low ponytail at the base of his neck; eyes that remind Shiro of the deepest parts of the ocean; long limbs and a tiny smattering of freckles across his cheeks, like constellations.

Whatever Shiro had imagined out in space, it hadn’t come close to this.

He blinks, startled out of his train of thought when he realizes he’s being looked at expectantly.

“Keith,” he says, inelegantly, because he can’t really think of anything else.

It earns him a snort of amusement. “Not what you expected, huh?” Keith asks, grinning at him, slantwise and teasing.

Shiro meets those stunning eyes head-on, and smirks.

“Nah.” Keith tips his head up. Shiro steps closer. “Better.”

 

(Keith has to lean up a bit to press their foreheads together, but his skin is warm against Shiro’s where they touch. Something in his eyes reminds Shiro of the irresistible pull of the cosmos.

When Keith laughs, it’s like sunshine.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Come say hi on social media ^__^ I'm [@okw_tr](https://twitter.com/okw_tr) on Twitter and [okwtr](https://okwtr.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. You can check there for ways to support my writing and request more content! ♥️


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